Giuliani stumps in Central Valley

For a trade-show crowd accustomed to swapping ideas on crops and livestock, the topic of Rudolph W. Giuliani's breakfast speech was a sober diversion: terrorism.

"This desire of these terrorists to come here and kill us is going to continue, and we've got to focus on how we're going to protect ourselves," the former New York City mayor told several hundred farmers from a makeshift stage in a giant shed.

So it goes in the nascent presidential campaign of the Republican whose fading political career sprang back to life in the aftermath of the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11. In five days of campaigning in California, Giuliani has made terrorism his paramount focus -- that and his story of a New York turnaround on his watch at City Hall.

At stops in Sacramento, Santa Clara, Fresno and Tulare, Giuliani also outlined a business-friendly agenda for the country, though he was light on details.

But what drew crowds of autograph seekers was the man who led New York through Sept. 11, and for Giuliani, every campaign venue was suitable for invoking memories of the attacks.

"Most of the first hour was just reacting quickly," he recalled Monday in a speech to Silicon Valley business leaders. "When you get attacked like that," he told the farmers at the World Ag Expo on Tuesday, "there's a period of time when you feel really isolated."

He has also shared his recollections of the twin towers attacks in paid speeches around the world, and plans do so again today at a private event in San Diego. (A spokeswoman declined to say who would pay him or how much.) But now those stories are central to his core campaign theme: America, he says, must stay on offense against terrorists.

"For a long part of my life, my job was law enforcement, so I've known about terrorism for quite some time," the former federal prosecutor told farmers.

In Santa Clara, he opened his speech by imitating Marlon Brando's gravelly voice in "The Godfather," an old Giuliani gag that now serves to remind voters that he prosecuted mobsters in the 1980s.

His California tour has erased any doubt that Giuliani would seek his party's 2008 White House nomination. "Yes, I am running," he said Tuesday.